Another Doris McCarthy Trail Hike

Having moved to Scarborough almost a year ago, we have had a chance to visit a few of the conservation and lake trail areas near us. One I mentioned in a previous post, a ravine near us which extents quite some distance and covers many parks and trails, is one. The Doris McCarthy trail is our favourite so far though.

We decided to get out Sunday night for a longish walk. It's always an enjoyable thing to do together and we always see something, often more than one something, interesting.

It was around 3:30ish so it was quite quiet there. A couple people. No dragonflies but lots of butterflies and moths. This time we headed east from the path once we hit the shoreline below. We walked on a rock ledge around an attached island I guess it sort of was. In the centre of this island, there was a tent, empty we think. A little freaky, guess someone lives in it here or there or maybe always. A bit further we did run into an odd man using some sort of machine to make what we thought were bird calls, but as we got closer, I don't think this is what he was doing. Possibly he was a challenged person, not too sure. I took a shot of him as he walked away as he was quite curiosity inducing.

Along this sort of precarious detour around this rock shelf, we looked and could see little fossils in the ones near the end. So cool!!!

Another really exciting sight, and there were 3 sightings of it, was a red tailed hawk and a juvi red tailed hawk crying for dinner in a far tree. I was able to see them but they were far so my images of them are not great. One is of the parent presumably, flying from the tree and the other was of the juvi as she sat on a branch, calling and calling. Another bird we saw but unfortunately could not identify, was very hidden in branches of a tree. There were 2 little yellow birds with some dark markings visible, in a nest, calling to their parents for food. Maybe some sort of warbler or yellow finches but we saw no others in the vicinity. So adorable but not easily seen nor photographed, though I got 1 shot which shows they were yellow and in a nest.

Part of this walkway, which I guess the city is also working on, it is similar to Tommy Thompson Park in that there is clean fill along a lot of the shoreline. Discarded bricks, scrapped building materials, chunks of marble and composite rock, rusted metal and re-bar, lots of cool stuff. At one point I lifted up a brick, turned it over, and there to our surprise was the husk of a butterfly pupa. Of all the bricks, and I pick that one to pick up and look at. It was so neat.